Trial lecture: Social Referencing and Joint Attending - What Behavioral Processes are Involved in the Establishment and Differentiation of these Behavioral Repertoires.
Ordinary opponents:
- First opponent: Senior Research Scientist, Samuel L. Odom, The University of North Carolina
- Second opponent: Executive Director, Dr. Dawn Townsend, Alliance for Scientific Autism Intervention, Inc.
- Leader of the committee: Associate Professor Anette Brogård Antonsen, OsloMet
Leader of the public defence is Head of Department Johannes Gjerstad, OsloMet.
Supervisors are Associate Professor Sigmund Eldevik, OsloMet and Professor Svein Eikeseth, OsloMet.
Thesis abstract
The Social Referencing Observational Scale (SoROS) measures and detects deficits in social referencing skills in children between 2.6 and 5.0 years of age.
Since abnormalities in social referencing is a key deficit in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it may also be used as a screening instrument for ASD. It is quick and easy to use and can be conducted by preschool teachers as part of a standard early education assessment.
I will summarize three studies:
- development of SoROS and assessment of children with typical development
- assessment of children with ASD using SoROS and comparing the results with those for children with typical development
- evaluating specific programs to teach components of social referencing behavior.
Study 1
In Study 1, 204 typically developing children aged 2.6 to 5 years were assessed on the SoROS.
For typical development a clear pattern of behavior was observed, regardless of age and gender, where the most common behaviors during presented scenarios (Fear, Pain, Joy) were Looking at the person (the experimenter) and Taking some action with the materials.
In other words, the most typical social referencing behavior, when encountering a novel and ambiguous situation, was to observe the reaction of the other person, before taking action. Each of those behaviors can be considered components of a social referencing behavior chain.
Study 2
In Study 2, 56 children with autism aged between 2.6 and 5 years were assessed.Their results were significantly different to those of children of typical development, indicating that children with ASD do not look at the experimenter or take any action with the materials.
Moreover, SoROS predicted an ASD diagnosis with excellent sensitivity and specificity. Inter-rater reliability for individual scoring behaviors was good to high. However, more research is needed with a larger and more diverse group of children.
Study 3
In Study 3, a program to teach the first component of social referencing – reacting to new and missing objects in the environment – was introduced for the six children with ASD.
All of them acquired and generalized the skill to new people and materials. Future research is needed on teaching other components of social referencing behavior.
